The present invention relates to a pull-on disposable wearing article adapted to absorb and to retain bodily discharges.
There has already been proposed a pull-on disposable wearing article defining front and rear waist regions opposed to each other and a crotch region extending between these waist regions, on one hand, and comprising a liquid-pervious topsheet, a liquid-impervious backsheet and a liquid-absorbent core interposed between these sheets so as to form a waist-hole and a pair of leg-holes lying below the waist-hole, on the other hand, for example, by Japanese Patent Application Publication Nos. 1999-104177A and 1999-155904A.
The pull-on disposable articles disclosed in the above-cited Publication is folded in two in the crotch region so that the respective inner surfaces of the front and rear waist regions may come in contact with each other. A set of about 16 to 48 individual articles is orderly and compactly packed in a package and sold per such package. For example, when 16 diapers are packed in the package, eight articles are placed one against another to form a row extending in a back-and-forth direction and a pair of such rows are stacked in a vertical direction or arranged side by side. In each of these rows, each pair of the articles adjacent in the back-and-forth direction, substantially entire outer surface defined by the front and rear waist regions and the crotch region of the one article is in contact with the corresponding entire outer surface of the other article. When it is desired to pick up one of these articles, the top wall of the package may be broken and the target one article may be finger-gripped and pulled out from the package toward above the package.
Within the package, the article disclosed by the above-cited Publication is folded in two so that the respective inner surfaces of the front and rear waist regions may come in contact with each other and, in consequence, lateral zones of the crotch region destined to define the respective leg-holes are also folded in two and overlaid so as to close the respective leg-holes. To put the article folded in such state on the wearer's body, it is necessary to broaden the respective leg-holes as the wearer's legs are guided through these leg-holes and therefore a troublesome handling is required to put the article on the wearer's body.
In addition, within the package packing a plurality of the articles as disclosed by the above-cited Publication, these articles are compressed together in the back-and-forth direction under a pressure in a range of approximately 15 to 70 N exerted thereon in the back-and-forth direction from longitudinally opposite ends of the row. As a result, a predetermined force is required to pull one of the articles out from the row. These articles are held in contact one with another substantially over the entire outer surface defined by the front and rear waist regions and the crotch region of each of the articles. In other words, the contact area between each pair of the articles adjacent in the back-and-forth direction is relatively large and a frictional force between these articles is correspondingly high. Inconveniently, a force in a range of 20 to 22 N is required to pull the first article out from the row.